Defragmentation of a file system with a small amount of free space can be extremely slow and/or impossible due to defragmentation application limitations. Currently the only way to accelerate the defragmentation process on such a file system is to free space on the file system to be defragmented prior to the defragmentation process. This can be achieved by manually removing a file or moving it to another disk drive temporarily. The problem with this method is that it would not be known if the removal of the file freed enough space or even freed more than required and a certain level of user trial and error is needed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,300, PowerQuest Corp, discloses data manipulation during partition imaging whereby data may be defragmented during the process of copying it from one partition to another. However, U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,300 does not describe defragmentation of a particular partition nor using multiple partitions to defragment a single partition.